1. Field of Invention
The present art relates to an online e-commerce and networking system with subsystems that meet users' work and life needs and entities' operational needs, a creative community model enabling entities to build deeper and better relationships with users and a revolutionary online advertisement model enabling direct interaction between users and entities through incentives users desire to create large online communities, so that more effective online advertisements are enabled to create a win-win situation for all stakeholders, including individual users, advertisers, publishers, organizations, and online advertisement networks.
2. Description of Related Art
There are several major types of e-commerce websites in the current market. Some websites are hybrids of several types of e-commerce websites. One common type is an organizational e-commence website, whereby various organizations developed their own e-commerce websites to sell their products and services online. For example, an online banking website provides its customers a digital way to obtain products and services via the Internet. For another example, a charity organization's website allows the public to directly donate money via credit card to the charity organization.
Another common type is an Internet Marketplace. Such websites provide centralized digital places to connect buyers and sellers and provide means for online transactions. Such websites include eBay.com, Amazon.com, Alibaba.com, etc. Their business model is based on bringing buyers and sellers together to create a marketplace community, so that the website acting as a third party can charge item posting fees, transaction fees, and advertising fees, although the advertising may not be their main source of revenue generation.
The third common type of e-commerce websites is an Internet Advertising Website whereby a significant amount of the revenue, if not majority, is derived from online advertising. Such websites include Google.com, Yahoo.com, Youtube.com, Myspace.com, Facebook.com, etc. Their business model is to attract crowds by offering free search engine functions, and free social networking, entertainment, and communication, so that they can attract advertisers to advertise on their websites due to their large membership bases. They also generate part of their revenue by offering fee based products and services.
Based on the history of Internet since its popularity in 1990s, the current e-commerce websites have evolved from primitive to mature stage. The advantages and benefits of such e-commerce websites are:
They have enabled Business-to-Business, Business-to-Consumer, and Consumer-to-Consumer online transactions and dramatically improved transaction efficiency. The current e-commerce websites quickly connect buyers and sellers who may never be able to meet in a non-internet environment.
They have created a new way of advertising for companies and organizations to promote their products and services. As a result, they have increased sales for some companies.
They have provided social network online environments for people to find friends, to communicate, to share viewpoints and experiences, and to entertain one another. Thus, they have been able to attract crowds and build online communities to facilitate e-commerce activities.
However, the current e-commerce websites are not designed with the objective of addressing many other types of needs of entities and individuals, so that even larger online communities can be built to enable more online e-commerce activities. Such needs include but are not limited to entities' operational needs, and individuals' work and life needs.
Current e-commerce websites are faced with challenges to: 1) improve online advertisement revenue due to relatively low response rates (e.g., clicks per thousand impressions) and even lower response rates that lead to successful sales; 2) sustain users' interests on their sites; 3) deal with criticism of distracting young people from their studies; and 4) attract more online advertisements especially for social networking sites, whereby advertisers find it difficult to entice social networking users to act on their online advertisements.
The Internet is currently in a mature stage, but there is still tremendous room to grow. After more than a decade of rapid growth, the next phase of e-commerce websites should be at a more advanced level, whereby they provide advanced functions to meet organizations' various operational needs and individuals various work and life needs, and to aim at building deeper and better relationships among advertisers, publishers, organizations, and individual users.
The present invention is based on our identification of such growth trends to further explore the unprecedented potential of online e-commerce and online targeted advertisements, so as to enable e-commerce sites to accelerate by tapping into the tidal wave of e-commerce.
The prior art online advertisement model is mainly based on a one-directional model: advertisers provide online advertisements to publishers on a fee basis, and the publishers present the advertisements to general public or targeted audience. In some other cases, advertisers provide online advertisements to a network advertisement agent, who assigns those advertisements to various publishers and receives a percentage of the advertisement dollars. The publishers then present the advertisements to general public or targeted audience.
The present invention of a online advertisement model provides multi-directional interactions among the these parties, so that individual users can request sponsorship directly from advertisers for products, services and items they desire on our proposed online e-commerce and networking system in exchange for advertisers displaying the advertisements on users' community pages and their online e-commerce and networking account space. And our proposed online e-commerce and networking system provides a centralized platform for an entity to partner with other entities to directly build deeper and better relationships with users by attracting users to communities and online events through sponsorships and incentives.
The present invention further enables utilitarian computing, so that significant data related to specific business processes and individual consumption patterns are collected centrally for analyses. Such analyses help to further improve the entire business model and to provide more effective online advertisements to targeted audience. The present invention will contribute to significantly enhanced efficiency in our society, and will make people's life easier by taking care of their work and life needs.
Prior arts related to e-commerce or social networking websites include: a system and method to influence a position for search listing; e-stamp for customized advertisements; automated book marking of online advertisements; generation of advertisement information; enabling advertiser to create advertisement templates; sale of online advertisements; method for operating an online social network; providing advertisement contents based on categories of search results; pricing of online advertisements; processing electronic receipts through a smart receipt application, etc.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,363,300 discloses a system and method for enabling information providers using a computer network to influence a position for search listing within a search result list.
US Patent Application No. 20010025254 discloses an electronic stamp providing system to deliver customized online advertisements to an electronic mail receiver upon recipient choices to view the customized online ads by clicking electronic stamps attached in emails received.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,486,891 discloses a method of facilitating the automated bookmarking of a web page associated with an online advertisement, whereby the advertisement causes a web page associated with the advertisement to be bookmarked in the user's browser.
US Patent Application No. 20050065806 discloses online information (such as advertiser web pages in conjunction with products lists, web content, existing online ads, etc), or an electronic version of offline advertisement information that is used to generate online advertisement information, such as a landing page, targeting information, and/or ad creative information.
US Patent Application No. 20070233566 discloses a system and method for facilitating cooperative search engine marketing among business entities and their respective channel partners, whereby such business entities can create and distribute approved advertisements and campaign templates, allocate and track the usage of market development funds, monitor the results of sponsored search advertising campaigns, and streamline the reimbursement process for market development funds.
US Patent Application No. 20080077595 discloses a method for operating a website for an online social networking includes the steps of receiving a group picture containing a plurality of individuals, receiving identification information regarding the individuals in the group picture, displaying the group picture, and selectively displaying labels for the individuals after the individuals confirm that they have been correctly identified.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,191,147 discloses systems and methods for facilitating the sale of classified ad items, whereby a linkage is created between a print advertisement and an online counterpart, and that consumers are encouraged to view and/or purchase online an item for sale in the print classified ad.
US Patent Application No. 20080103894 discloses a method and process for providing a merit-based incentive points system for amateur sports and competitive and non-competitive events wherein merit points are purchased from points administrator and distributed by event organizers and sponsors as participation and performance awards to contestants and participants. Such merit points functioning as points currency of value, can be accrued, traded, exchanged, and redeemed for scholarships, goods and services.
US Patent Application No. 20080015935 discloses a method for management of a resource by a community of participants comprising: (a) defining individual tasks necessary for managing the resource; (b) allocating a quantum of redeemable reward points to each defined task; (c) defining participants within the community to execute tasks for reward points; (d) selecting rewards which may be redeemed by surrendering reward points earned by participants and allocation of values to each reward expressed in reward points; (e) providing an information system which enables participants to view and claim available rewards; and (f) providing an information system which keeps track of tasks, points and rewards associated with participants.
US Patent Application No. 20080082416 discloses a domain that hosts a general e-commerce marketplace establishes multiple sub-domains to host niche electronic marketplaces, wherein these niche sub-domain sites are built around a concept and offer for sale items that relevant to that concept, the sub-domain sites are operated by communities of individuals, and each community is responsible for determining many facets of the consumer experience at the sub-domain site.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,757,661 discloses an ad server and local device that interface for selecting advertisements to be viewed by users of an online service based upon user activity.
US Patent Application No. 20070100801 discloses a method for providing advertising content for display in a page over a network, whereby the advertising content is displayed based on a category assigned to the advertising content and the category correlating to a given search may be based on the search results that may be associated with one or more categories and the category associated with the highest count of search results is the category for that search.
US Patent Application No. 20020073034 discloses a system and method for pricing a classified advertisement whereby the method includes receiving a classified advertisement from an advertiser to be distributed to at least one of multiple device types and a price may be determined an displayed for the classified advertisement as formatted for presentation by the device type(s).
US Patent Application No. 20050033668 discloses a method and apparatus for allowing a vendor to: create, maintain, validate, submit, review, and print all of its invoices, such as for example air, armored, ground, and automated teller machine (ATM) fault servicing, on a secure network is provided, wherein GUI screens are provided for inputting invoices, making invoice preparation as simple and as efficient as possible.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,898,598 discloses a method, program, and system for processing electronic receipts within a computer network that comprises creating a customer profile for a user using a Smart Receipt application, whereby electronic receipts (smart receipts) are sent from the point of sale to a designated database when the user purchases items, and a smart receipt object is initiated which retrieves the specified electronic receipt from the appropriate database according to the user's search parameters when he wants a copy of a receipt.
US Patent Application No. 20030120607 discloses a system and method for creating and verifying e-receipts whereby the system and method allow consumers and merchants to perform e-transactions using a secure e-receipt system that includes programmable information tags such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology.
US Patent Application No. 20080097844 discloses handling electronic coupons by accessing information indicating association of an electronic coupon with an account of a user that identifies multiple retail entities associated with the user, whereby the computer systems may associate electronic coupons with the user such that the user may redeem the electronic coupons at a retail store upon presentation of a user identifier, and the systems may prevent the user from redeeming the electronic coupon at a retail store associated with the corresponding retail entity.
None of the prior arts provide a centralized location to meet individuals' wide variety of needs and to integrate entity operation processes. None of the prior arts enable entities to directly involve in community building and event hosting to foster deeper and better relationships with users. And none of the prior arts allow individuals and entities to become publishers of online advertisements in exchange to obtain incentive rewards through requesting sponsorship.